She closed her eyes and for once let herself feel everything. Not just what was happening in Lucille to people who looked like her, not just what they’d done to all the kids like Eddie, but also the darkness of the years she’d forgotten, the boy hunting her while she hid in the attic, his hands in her hair, the foster parents who called her and her mother cursed, the shame of knowing her father was a monster, which meant monster blood ran in her, but that was fine because if it took monster blood to get rid of the monsters, then Bitter was ready to do her part, her terrible and necessary part, no more hiding in Eucalyptus, no more staying apart and uninvolved. Her mother was dead and her father was a monster and Bitter didn’t know what she was, but she knew what she could do, she knew it was powerful and she was tired of being scared. Maybe it was time to become the scary one, the one they ran from, the one who could hurt those who thought they were untouchable. Nothing was untouchable. Bitter knew this because of everything that had already been taken from her. The foster parents had said she would end up nowhere, and she didn’t even mind, because if you were nowhere, then you could make up wherever you wanted to be, you could make it real. You could, for example, paint it into existence.
And right now, Bitter wanted to be safe and protected, she wanted to matter more than the money that people like Theron used as a weapon, she wanted all of them to matter more than the money. The blood was a red mirror in her hand. Bitter let all the hurt and rage and want flood up her throat and out past her teeth and lips. She screamed as loudly as she could and slapped her hand full of blood down on the painting, right over the figure’s wide, wide mouth. It was so wet under her palm.
“Come out,” she ordered. “Come out and play.” There was a wealth of anger in that last word, but she didn’t regret it because these monsters, you see, it was all a game to them. Eddie’s eye was a game, the protests and the deaths and the suffering weren’t real because the people weren’t real to them, to Dian Theron and men like him, whose ancestors had owned people and boasted about it with statues all over Lucille. Assata and the Elders had ruined the statues righteously, splashing them with red paint, pulling one or two down, the heavy stone crashing against the street, but what happened to the alive monsters like Theron? Those who kept playing with people like lives didn’t matter. Bitter wanted them to feel what it was like to be on the other end of it, and she put all that sour rage into her hand and her voice and her order.
It took only a few seconds for the figure to stir, its wide mouth drinking in her blood, smearing it down its chin and neck. Bitter snatched her hand away and scrambled backward, watching the painting with fascinated horror. She’d never seen one this big come to life, and she hadn’t even been sure that it would, despite all the energy she’d poured into it. A groaning sound came out from the wood, and the edges of the panel began to buckle and warp. The muddy white of the figure lifted up from the surface, ballooning into the air, then it flattened back down with a wet slap before ballooning up again. It looked like it was breathing, and Bitter realized it was trying to come forth, pushing as hard as it could. Itabashi was still playing on repeat over her speakers, the volume blasting as loud as it could go, surreal birds chirping as the painting tried to break through. Goose bumps raced up Bitter’s legs.
“Come out!” she yelled, her arm a scream of pain. She wanted it to live. She wanted it to be everything she’d hoped and wept for, a weapon for the people, and it would mean that she had done something right, she’d helped instead of watching everyone fight on the front lines. “Come out and play!” The words felt like knives in her mouth, cutting her tongue with despair and malice. The painting groaned back, a deep and restructuring sound. Its head broke free of the wood, splinters flying into the air, and Bitter flinched. The figure was much larger than she’d expected—its scaled head alone was about half the size of her body, with seven narrow and opaque eyes, all a feline yellow with black slits. Its neck snaked out from the painting, a streak of wax gleaming down its red throat, jagged white eggshells marking its spine, going on forever before the torso emerged with a slick hiss.
The creature looked like it was made out of compressed smoke that was having a hard time staying together; it kept giving off thick gouts of gray and white that would then pull back to the body. It was already eclipsing Bitter’s room, its head bending against her ceiling as the rest of its body broke out of the wood, long limbs and hooked claws. An acrid smell filled the air, and Bitter noticed that the wooden panel was charring as the creature worked its way through. She stared in shock as the wood burned, as this thing unfolded in front of her, terrifying and absolutely too big for this world. Her desk was pushed aside, then her bed and armchair, all the furniture scraping across the floor as the figure swelled into the room. Bitter pressed her back against the wall, speechless. It was going to crush her, she realized, it was going to crush her, explode out of her room, and collapse the building. Miss Virtue was going to be fucking pissed.
“Stop!” she yelled above the crackling smoke and agonized wood. “Yuh growing too much—stop!”
To her surprise, the figure paused. Its face snaked around on that unnaturally long neck before the seven eyes found her, and the wide mouth stretched even wider, dark with her own blood.
“Child,” it said, and its voice was like glass stabbing through her head. Bitter cried out and covered her ears. The figure tilted its head, the mouth still obscenely open.
“That hurt,” Bitter choked out. “A lot.”
The figure made a low-pitched rolling sound, and Bitter watched as its body contracted down into a size that could fit her room. It was still unimaginably large—she had to crane her neck back to be able to look up at it. It dragged the rest of its body out of the painting, leaving a charred hole in the middle of the wood panel. Bitter could see that the sheet underneath was singed, and she said a quick and futile prayer to no one in particular that the floor wasn’t damaged, because she had no idea how she’d explain that to Miss Virtue. The creature’s several eyes looked at Bitter without blinking, out of that scaled and shifting face, the chasm of its mouth perpetually stretched as wisps of smoke drifted off it and dispersed into the air.
“Child,” it said again, but this time its voice didn’t hurt. It was low, too low to be from this world, guttural and thick, like something that had been dead for a very long time. Still, Bitter wasn’t afraid. She’d been alone for too long to be afraid now, and all the things she made were hers, no matter how scary they looked. They were born from her head and her hands and her monster child blood.
“My name is Bitter,” she said, taking a small step toward it, curious now. None of her paintings had ever spoken to her before, but this one was never meant to be like the rest. “I made you.”
The creature slithered along her walls, repositioning itself away from the charred wood. “I know,” it said. “I am the first.”
“No, I does make paintings come alive all the time,” Bitter corrected.
The creature looked at her with its flat eyes. “I am the first,” it repeated, lowering its head to be level with hers. A cold feeling crossed the back of Bitter’s neck. Was it disagreeing with her? Pushing back? They weren’t supposed to do that.